Letter from the Dean

September 2007--As we begin the start of a new shool year I ask a question of myself: “How do we serve?”  This is not meant to sound as shallow or coy as a TV commercial or ad for the latest restaurant or travel destination.  Instead, the question reflects deeper thoughts about our commitment as a library to the Marquette University community as we imagined when we stated our strategic goals in “Envisioning the Future: the Next Seven Years 2007-2013.”

These days it is easy to find yourself swimming in a sea of information, and there are plenty of experts who have found Web communication as a way to deliver different ideas and opinions to your desktop.  How we serve as the Raynor Memorial Libraries in collaboration with others, is to help you, as a part of the Marquette community, to integrate effectively and with confidence new and existing technologies in your academic work, be it teaching, learning, or research.

We join our colleagues in college and university libraries across the United States who use a global reach to work with faculty to help introduce students to critical information, both through our collections and by providing access to resources in print and digital formats.  Our goals are consistent with the efforts of using Web communication and the power of digitizing information to augment existing print resources in support of the growth of scholarship through discovery of ideas.

To those of you who are brand new to Marquette, we wish to extend a special welcome.  We believe that you will find our services and facilities to be among the best a college or university can offer.  As a place to visit, we offer you workstations, a café, and spaces for group and individual study.  You will find excellence in our staff working throughout the building at various service desks and behind the scenes.

Whether new or returning, students will find that Raynor Memorial Libraries will become your “voyage of discovery” as you pursue learning at Marquette, and we want to make certain that your experience is a good one.

We will do our part to make sure that the academic experience of all of our students—undergraduate and graduate alike—mirrors the excellence of Marquette.  We do this through access to essential materials and services we provide, such as Instant Messaging reference questions, interlibrary loan services, or the ability to meet with a librarian one-on-one to help you develop strategies for finding key information for research papers and longer term projects, such as theses and dissertations.

We continue to see support for faculty research and teaching as a top priority.  Among the changes this year are new guidelines and policies relating to electronic reserves.  We appreciate the patience of our faculty during the transition from old to new practices.

This year I expect that we in the Raynor Memorial Library will continue to ask you, “How can we serve?”  We look forward to working with you in the coming year.

The complete 2007-2013 strategic plan is posted online.

Janice Simmons-Welburn
Dean, University Libraries